1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for creating height-limited-area information for an empty space from a base plane based on three-dimensional shape information of a three-dimensional structure in which the empty space formed when plural sub-structures are combined.
2. Description of the Related Art
To design an information processing device and the like, electrical designing that uses an electrical computer-aided design (CAD) system and mechanical designing that uses a mechanical CAD system has been performed in parallel. For example, the electrical designing includes designing a circuit on a printed circuit board, and the mechanical designing includes designing a shape of a chassis and designing arrangement of components.
The electrical designing and the mechanical designing can be performed in parallel. However, a shape of the chassis often limits the shape and arrangement of electrical components, and information of the electrical designing and information of the mechanical designing need to be mutually exchanged according to the progress of the design work. Therefore, an electrical CAD-mechanical CAD interaction supporting system that supports the exchange of the necessary information between the electrical designing and the mechanical designing has been developed. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. H11-73434 describes a component-arrangement-restricting-condition creating device that creates information such as a limit to the height due to the shape of the chassis as a component-arrangement restricting condition and reflects the result designed by the mechanical CAD system to the electrical CAD system.
However, according to the technology described above, the printed circuit board is regarded as a plain surface. As a result, when the electrical designing needs to consider the restriction of the component arrangement after some electrical components are mounted on the printed circuit board and transfers the design information with the electrical components mounted on the printed circuit board, there is a problem that the mechanical designing cannot create information such as the limit to the height based on the printed circuit board having the electrical components mounted thereon.